BAGHDAD, April 9 (Xinhua) -- Political leaders of Iraq's Shiite United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) formed a committee on Sunday to discuss the fate of embattled Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

    "We have formed a three-member committee from the Shiite alliance to hold talks with the Kurds, the Sunnis and the secularists over the nomination of Jaafari and then to suggest final opinion," Basim al-Sharif, a Shiite parliament member told reporters.

    The politicians of the Shiite bloc, the largest in the 275-member parliament, held a meeting earlier on Sunday to find a way out of the ongoing political impasse after the Kurds and Sunnis rejected the nomination of Jaafari for a full-term premiership in the country's long-awaited government.

    The three-member committee consisted of Jawad al-Maliki of Jaafari's Dawa party, Hussein al-Shahristani, deputy parliament speaker and Sheikh Hamam Hamoudi from the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq, according to a source close to the meeting.

    Jaafari, who was narrowly selected as the UIA's candidate for premier on Feb. 12, is facing unyielding rejection from members within the Shiite alliance as well as from Kurdish, Sunni and secular political parliamentary blocs, which call for withdrawing his candidacy for the post.

    Sunni and Kurdish political leaders have accused Jaafari of failing to deal with sectarian violence which escalated after the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra on Feb. 22. Jaafari, however, refused to step down after his own Dawa party and Sadr faction supported him to cling to the post. However, he said that he is ready to abandon his candidacy if the parliament asks him to do so.

    Sunday's formation of the committee coincided with the third anniversary of Saddam Hussein's fall exactly three years ago. On April, 9, 2003, Iraqis tore down Saddam's statue in central Baghdad with assistance from the U.S. military. Enditem